Abstract

This chapter compares and contrasts the four big social and political movements that produced rapid political change in modern Egyptian history. These include the 1881–1882 ’Urabi Revolt, the 1919 Egyptian Revolution, the 1952 Cairo fire and Young Officers’ Coup, and the upheaval of 2011–2012. It is argued that all of these events involved a ‘rapid and systematic political change’ that is ‘brought about by a social movement.’ In turn, social movements involve organized campaigns to achieve their goals by using techniques such as rallies, vigils, strikes, public speaking, and pamphleteering to influence their audience. The chapter discusses the goals and the forms of popular mobilization deployed in each of these revolutionary moments, and compares and contrasts them to one another.

The Egyptian revolt of 2011 was the fourth such mass movement for political and social change in the country’s history since the late nineteenth century. Each of these revolutionary moments was characterized by a political agenda and by a social dimension, usually a protest about the comportment of economic elites and the form of the country’s political economy. These political and social movements have clearly and powerfully shaped the evolution of the modern Egyptian nation. In order to understand the events of 2011–2012, it will be helpful to place them in this historical context. Some themes are common across the movements whereas others are unique to the twenty-first century.